In childhood I kept quiet and mostly stayed to myself but if you dared to tell me what to do I asked you who the hell you think that you are telling me what to do; If you tried to force it, such as when my uncle Bernard insisted that I go to do farming for our grandmother I felt angry and simply refused to go to their farm to do farm work. I flat out refused to do their farm work and you could not make me do it. They called me a stubborn, unruly boy but I simply refused to do physical work (my fragile physical body could not do farm work, so it was not just irrational stubbornness at work).

As a teenager I was forced to live in what is called Biafra; Igbos were fighting with Nigerians. The Igbos were conscripting boys above age fourteen into their army. They came to our compound with the intention of conscripting the teenage boys. I was so angry at them that I was ready to kill them. I told them to get the fuck out of our compound. I asked them why they think that their idiot Ojukwu and idiot Gowon should go bring about a war and not go fight it like men, amano-amano, with each other, and, instead, come to conscript innocent boys like me to fight their goddamned war for them. The soldiers looked at me like I was insane but I simply ordered them out of our compound. I reminded them that the Geneva Convention forbids conscripting children under age eighteen into the army. The alternative they have was to shoot and kill me but not ask me to do what I do not want to do; no human being has ever done that to me. I only do what I want to do not what other men born of women ask me to do. I have been that way since I was born.

So, why do I feel angry when other people ask me to do something? I believe that I have now found the answer.

As a child I was traumatized by pain (due to inherited mitochondria disorder). In pain I felt abandoned by God and man. I felt that no one is helping me to overcome my pain and felt angry at God and people for abandoning me to live in pain.

My sense of abandonment was compounded when at age eight my parents sent me to their village for two years to go live with their parents and my uncle Bernard asked me to follow him and his son, Fabian, to go do our grandmother's farm work (Iko-ji). I resolutely said no. and they looked at me as a crazy boy; in their world an eight year old boy simply does not disobey his uncles.

I believe that what my parents did, send me to go live with their parents, added to my sense of abandonment by God and man. I felt alone in this wide world.

If I am in pain and alone and no one helps me reduce my pain, who the hell do you think that you are telling me what to do; what do you do for me; do you make my pain go away?

In the USA, lately, I ran into a bunch of idiot Igbos at Nigerian Internet forums and they want every Igbo to kowtow to their brain dead ideas and if you disagree with them they call you all sorts of put down names. If you agree with them you are fine and welcomed into their world but if you disagree with them they come at you with their limited vocabulary calling you all sorts of abusive names. They want you to conform to their mass delusion disorder and see their nonsensical construction of reality as reality.

I felt angry at these Bushmen for wanting to tell me what to believe and do. I literally wanted to kill all of them. How dare these primitives to tell me what is true and not true? How dare they construct reality for me?

Are these not the same people whose parents until a hundred years ago were capturing and selling their people to white men? I have total disrespect for them.

Well, in time I learned to tune them out and do not pay attention to what they say. The relevant point is that I felt angry at them for daring to dictate to me what to believe and do.

The issue here is that I have always felt abandoned by God and people and therefore have a simmering anger at people and at God. As a teenager, all you needed to do is mention the word god and I would say to you: fuck you and your god; your god does not help eradicate my pain. God is useless, I said, and walked away from religionists who were always shoving the bible into my face (I would take their bible, though, and read it!).

My father is pretty much like me; he, too, had physical pains but he adapted by trying to achieve something so that his people would accept and praise him. After schooling he left his village and in a few years had made money from trading; he bought all sorts of modern gadgets for his brothers and villagers. His goal in life was to be an achiever, a rich man so that his people would recognize him as such. He wanted respect from his people.

Since he gave and gave to his brothers at a certain point he felt angry that they gave him nothing in return. When he sent me to the village he expected his brothers in the village to take care of me. They did not.

My mother, at Lagos, sent monthly parcels of rice, beans, stock fish, sardines, evaporated milk, margarine, corned beef and all kinds of goodies to me. Above all she sent money to me.

Mother sent enough money that her money was actually feeding those who were supposed to take care of me!

I was one of two boys in the village who went to school in clean and ironed clothes and wore shoes and always had pocket money. During recess (recreation, as they called it in the village school) I would buy most of the other kids in my class all kinds of candies, even food, for they had no money.

I am digressing; let me return to the main subject at hand, abandonment and anger. The issue is that I was angry because I was in pain and felt that the universe of God and man did not help me out of my pain and therefore people had no right to tell me what to do for they did not help me out of my pain.

When I read A course in miracles it says that anger is never justified. It says that anger is predicated on the grounds that people did something bad to you; it says that the world is a dream and what people did to you were done in a dream hence have not been done. Since what you see people do to you on earth is done in a dream and has no effect on you, for it has not been done, you should forgive them.

It says that your real self is the son of God; your real self is always in God, protected and safe; he is not in body for he is part of the unified spirit folks call God.

Despite the seeming evils folks do to each other on earth, in the dream, our real selves is said to be holy, innocent, sinless and guiltless.

Well, the book said that my anger is not justified because no one has really done anything bad to me; I had not been abandoned by God and man; it says that I am always in God but while in him I choose to sleep and in my sleep dream that I am separated from God and now live in body; I am still loved by God and man; I am taken care of by God and man. Even the bad that I see people do to me, if interpreted from the Holy Spirit is designed for me to overlook them and in doing so become saved.

I stopped right there and thought about what the book is saying. Initially, it seemed to be talking arrant nonsense but as I thought about its thesis it made eminent sense to me!

If the world is a dream (quantum physics says that our universe is a three dimensional universe and that there are infinite universes, each with its own dimensions and all of them are in one place!) it follows that my physical pains is not real; my pain takes place only in dreams and what takes place in dreams have not taken place in reality.

In reality I am spirit and in spirit I am not in body and what I see happen to me in body has not happened to me. White folks discrimination that I see happen to me has not happened to me, for it took place on earth, in a dream; no one has, in effect, discriminated against me.

The book added kudos to its thesis by saying that the world is our individual and collective dream hence we are collectively responsible for what happens to us.

On earth, in the dream, those who did to you what your ego calls good or bad did it to you according to your wish. You want to experience what other people, good or bad, did to you. The dreamer is responsible for his dream; nothing you do not want to experience enters your dream.

Since people did to you what you want to experience why do you feel angry at them, the book asks you?

The book asks you to overlook the dream; it asks you to forgive the dream and love the dreamers. Overlook what other people do to you on earth and love their real selves, the Christ in them.

All these seem to make sense to me. Then I asked: why did I give me a crummy, pained body to feel the way I felt, especially in childhood when I was in excruciating pain? Why did I ask my father to send me to his village at age eight to make me feel abandoned by him hence justify my life long anger at him (I did not forgive my father for sending me to his Igbo village to go live with those that even at age eight I considered primitive folk).

I did it to me to experience life in body and feel pain; in feeling pain I feel that I am body hence deny my spirit self; in identifying with body I separated from spirit and denied the reality of spirit (as I did in adolescence when I rejected religion).

A course in miracles tells me that in reality there is no one in body and that I am not in body and that there is no earth and that I am not on earth; it says that body and earth are mere dreams that I chose to enter and if I want to I can awaken from them and know myself as not in body and not on earth; therefore, I do not have to be angry at God and man for doing anything to my body, a body that does not exist!

This is what the book teaches. At first, what it teaches seems like loads of nonsense, bullshit, until I had mystical experiences that took me to non-material spheres, to the world of light forms and beyond and thereafter I recognized that the book makes a different kind of sense, not our usual ego sense but the sense of the Holy Spirit.

From my mystical experiences I learned that I am not body hence what was done to my body and ego was done in dreams and has not been done. Therefore, as the good book says, anger is not justified at those I see do bad things to me on earth, in the dream for they have done nothing to me.

Even when something was done to my body and ego, the book says that I chose them to experience whatever I experienced and therefore I am not a victim.

DISCUSSION

A course in miracles says that I choose whatever happens to me on earth, in the dream. This type of logic has made it impossible for me to justify anger at those I see doing bad things to me.

For example, at Nigerian Internet forums there are Idiot Igbos who specialize in verbally abusing folks. If they verbally abused me when I had not accepted a metaphysics that asks me to forgive them I would have gone after them and taken them down. I do not care if they crawl into their mother's filthy vaginas and hide in their mothers' bloody wombs, I would reap their mothers' stomachs open and drag them out and dash their idiot heads at the nearest rock.

But now their abuses merely amuse me, for I know that they are done in a dream state and have not been done. Besides, I called for their verbal abuses by trying to teach them an alternative way of living. If I had left them alone they would not have verbally abused me.

In effect, I asked them to verbally abuse me; I am not their victim for even in the dream I asked them to do to me what they did to me. In time I learned that their abuses are like water off my skin and do not matter.

CONCLUSION

Anger, as A course in miracles teaches, is never justified if one accepts that what is done on earth is done in a dream and has not in fact been done. People who seem to have abandoned me, attacked me did so in a dream and in reality have not done so.

In reality we all remain as God created us: spirit beings, not egos in bodies.

ADDENDUM

If life in body is not a dream and there is no bodiless dreamers, since the earth gives us enormous pain it is better that we destroyed the earth for it does not matter and there is no need to keep people suffering in body.

But if the earth is a dream then let people dream on in body and ego; for even if you destroy their body based civilization they can just reinvent other bodies to dream on earth with.

Thus, let people dream on until they are ready to awaken from their dream of separation and know that they are part of unified spirit self.

Ozodi Thomas Osuji is from Imo State, Nigeria. He obtained his PhD from UCLA. He taught at a couple of Universities and decided to go back to school and study psychology. Thereafter, he worked in the mental health field and was the Executive Director of two mental health agencies. He subsequently left the mental health environment with the goal of being less influenced by others perspectives, so as to be able to think for himself and synthesize Western, Asian and African perspectives on phenomena. Dr Osuji’s goal is to provide us with a unique perspective, one that is not strictly Western or African but a synthesis of both. Dr Osuji teaches, writes and consults on leadership, management, politics, psychology and religions. Dr Osuji is married and has three children; he lives at Anchorage, Alaska, USA.